Last week was a bad one for me. We had a family medical crisis and I was stressed out and my mother got really sick and I couldn’t stop itching cause its winter and my skin is all dry and work was just driving me mad and things seemed to be falling down around my ears and I kept having those days where I just couldn’t hold onto anything and kept dropping stuff and running into things and tripping over my own feet and saying the exactly most wrong thing I could say in any given situation and to top it all off I’m apparently trying to get a cold or something cause I’m feeling really run down and have a bad cough. *We interrupt this blog post for a deep breath.*
So in the middle of that week I made a short stop at my local Best Buy and wandered out about ten minutes later clutching a brand new Limited Edition Satin Silver Slim Line PlayStation 2 (and a memory card so that I could actually play the thing). I then wandered into my local GameStop and picked up a copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.’ (I can already hear Robert and Carl laughing.) Most of my free time since then has been spent playing my new game and I’m completely enamored with it. I turn off the task list and just wander the halls and grounds of Hogwarts Castle looking in every corner, opening every door. I hide under my Invisibility Cloak and sneak around the dungeons eavesdropping on the Slytherins. I hide in the stacks in the Restricted Section of the library so Hermione can’t find me. I climb the outside walls of the castle and stand of hidden ledges where Ron can’t follow me and just stare at the computer generated scenery. In short, I get as lost in the world of fantasy as I possibly can.
Growing up as the only child of older parents I seemed to have developed a very overactive imagination. Once I learned to read I fell in love with the worlds of literature and history. Nothing was more satisfying than finishing my homework so that I could return to the adventures of Robin Hood or the antebellum days of Huckleberry Finn. I could hear the ringing of steel when The Three Musketeers were fighting, I could smell Pa’s pipe smoke and hear his fiddle as Laura and I grew up in the Little House on the Prairie. I climbed mountains with explorers, sailed the seven seas with pirates, and once I even moved into the first colony on the surface of the Moon. I lived in the world of books and my own daydreams and can still catch myself drifting off when I stare out of a window for a little too long (which is why I never sat near them while I was in school).
I am very much a fan of Harry Potter. I think that, if for nothing else, J.K. Rowling should be commended for the fact that she has gotten an entire generation of ‘disaffected youth’ to read. Not only that, she managed to get them so excited to read that they happily stood in long lines outside of bookstores waiting for midnight so that they could get their hands on a copy of the continuing adventures of Harry and his friends. I openly and honestly admit to having stood in line for three such events…and I honestly can’t think of any other books I would have done this for (well…unless I could have been around when a new Jane Austen or a new Charles Dickens novel came out).
So with all that said I will continue to play my Harry Potter video games no matter how much I’m teased for doing so. (Oh, and as a side note to Robert and Carl…I have enough dirt on both of you to fill whole volumes. Just remember that.) Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go figure out how to make the gigantic clock in the clock tower run backwards.
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